Kurdistan expects to receive 500,000 IDPs from Mosul

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Kurdistan Region predicts that about one million Iraqis will flee Mosul and an estimated 500,000 of them will move to the Kurdistan Region, said the head of JCC on Wednesday.

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Joint Crisis Coordination Center (JCC) arranged a meeting with the KRG officials and the foreign diplomats and representatives in the Kurdistan Region, including the United Nations (UN), and discussed the humanitarian issue that hundreds of thousand internally displaced persons (IDPs) needs.

[JCC meeting with KRG and foreign diplomats in Erbil, June 22, 2016. (Photo: KRG)] 

Recently, Iraqi security forces freed the city of Fallujah in the west of Baghdad from the Islamic State (IS). Now, Iraqi and Kurdish security forces are preparing to liberate the second-largest city of Iraq, Mosul which has been turned into the capital of the extremists since it was captured in June 10, 2014.

In a statement to media, the General Director of JCC Hoshang Mohamad stated that they expect a tsunami of displaced people, as the offensive starts to target the center of the city.

Mohamad stated that he has asked the federal government of Iraq and the international community to provide US $275.5 million humanitarian aid to the IDPs to make sure that no human disaster will take place in the north of the country.

He also mentioned that the mentioned amount of the money will be spent on IDPs for a period of six months.

JCC expects IDPs to escape from Mosul from the west and east of the city. In the east, people are expected to move toward Makhmour and Hassan Sham while in the west, they are likely to leave toward Talmus and Talafar areas.

“According to the JCC plan, KRG will provide land for creating five IDP camps in the Kurdistan Region. Two in Erbil, Two in Duhok and one in Sulaimani,” Mohamad said. “None of the camps will be inside the cities.”

Kurdistan Region is currently home to almost two million refugees and IDPs that mostly come from Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) and other parts of Iraq.

Lisa Grandi, Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), told reporters that UN will provide humanitarian assistance to the KRG and emphasized that “the Kurdistan Region is not alone in helping IDPs.”

 [Lisa Grandi, Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), June 22, 2016. (Photo: Kurdistan24)]

Editing by Ava Homa